Within this section of the application, we outline the Community Engagement Core (CEC). We provide a brief description of evolving literature about promising community engagement efforts that have been used in other poor, urban African American communities experiencing health disparities. The successes and challenges experienced by other community engagement organizations infomied the strategies that we selected to obtain the information needed to develop a workable and successful intervention and intervention implementation plan. Individuals who facilitated the development and implementation of these community engagement plans in the Chicago and Baltimore areas serve on our National Community Advisory Board (Dr. Cynthia Boyd and Dr. Darrell Gaskin). Their knowledge, and data gleaned from the focus groups we will conduct will help us to develop, implement, and evaluate an intervention to improve the health of underserved African American communities in the Memphis Metropolitan area. Within this section, we will also describe specific community engagement strategies that we will use to eliminate health disparities. There are two specific aims. The CEC will: 1) Develop new and strengthen existing collaborative partnerships to enhance the capacity of current and future partners to engage in mutually beneficial community-based participatory research and evidencebased health promotion activities relative to preventing chronic diseases such as diabetes and cardiovascular disease. We will first convene a community health summit and help faith leaders and their congregations develop, implement, and evaluate health education/health behavior change initiatives. Second, we will plan, implement, and evaluate health education risk initiatives delivered by lay community health workers or public housing residents. Lay community health workers will also provide needed health promotion education and health behavior change strategies to public housing residents. 2) Empower community organizations to obtain resources to sustain health-focused programs. We will provide a workshop designed to teach effective grant writing techniques, so that community partners have the knowledge and skills to seek funding to support and sustain health initiatives. This experience with and knowledge about grants will empower community partners with knowledge with which to understand and negotiate their role in community-based participatory research facilitated by CHEER.